Juliet James (1)

I...have no idea what I just read. I mean, I've shelved it as "historical romance," and I suppose it is...if it's the sort of historical romance I would've written when I was 9 years old. And by that, I don't mean to disparage either my 9 year old writer self or Ms Juliet James: I wrote a pretty awesome yarn at 9 years old. But I also had only the merest grasp of plot and genre and point of view, all of which Ruby fumbles and stumbles with, too.

Up until the midpoint of the novel, I was certain the hero and heroine were Ben and Ruby. After all, up 'til that point, no other characters have any share in the storytelling. Sure, Ben's brother Matt has a thought or two threaded willy-nilly into Ben's third-person narrative, but most of the tale belongs to Ben. And then Ruby gets to town...and falls arse over tea kettle for Matt, who also thinks she's the world's best thing since the great epic love story of his Ma and Pa!

Maybe this is one of those romances where the wrong brother ends up engaged to the heroine and the hero has to sweep in and Fix Everything?

Nope. Not one of those stories. Matt and Ruby end up married. The End. And I mean that literally: The End, that's all she wrote, there's no more to the book. They get married. The End.

Ms James has a knack, I think, for capturing the voice of the characters and making you care about what matters to them. But judging by Ruby, she has no idea how to tell a story about those characters and clearly lacks sufficient experience with the romance, or even the western, genre to understand and play with the tropes and mechanisms of those types of stories.

If you read Ruby as a tongue-in-cheek spoof of a Western romance, it has a certain charm, but I don't believe the author intended it as such. Instead, it's disappointing and peculiar and rather pitiful.… (more)

While the plot itself was a good one, I feel that the writing development is a little on the immature side. I noticed that some portions of the book held more promise than others. It's hard to like a book and keep going when the book gives you that feeling of the tide: going in and out. Weak, building up, then goes back down. There IS potential, but it needs work.

The characters are okay, but I'm sure that with stronger development, they would be dynamite.

Like I said, there is potential! I'm just not sure that it would be worth my time to continue the series. I was really hoping that this second book would change my views.… (more)